Pell Grant Overhaul?
The Pell Grant program, the federal financial aid instrument that provides grants for low-income students to pursue postsecondary education, may be expanded with the bipartisan bill, Jumpstart Our Businesses by Supporting Students (JOBS) Act, proposed Senators Tim Kaine (D-Va.), and Rob Portman (R-Ohio). Currently, Pell grants can only be applied toward postsecondary degree programs or programs that are more than 600 clock hours or at least 15 weeks in length, even though many job training programs are shorter term.
The bill is intended to help close this “skills-gap” by expanding Pell Grant eligibility to cover high-quality short-term job training programs so workers can afford the skills training and credentials that are in high demand. There are 7.3 million U.S. jobs that are vacant due to a shortage of qualified workers, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The JOBS Act would amend the Higher Education Act to expand Pell Grant eligibility to students enrolled in high-quality job training pro-grams that are at least 8 weeks in length and lead to industry-recognized credentials and certificates that meet the needs of local and regional workforces. For-profit institutions are not included in the bill.
“We need to broaden our definition of higher education to include quality career and technical programs. And we have to make sure that federal policy supports this kind of learning, too,” said Kaine in a statement. “By allowing Pell grants to be used for high-quality job training, our bill will help more people afford these programs and pre-pare for good-paying jobs.”
However, some policy advocates oppose this change and say that it may over-expand the Pell grants program, weakening its over-all strength.
“This is a significant shift in the nature of the program,” said Mary Alice McCarthy, director of the Center on Education and Skills at New America, as reported by Inside Higher Ed on July 18, 2019. “It means now it would both be helping people pay for college and also doubling as probably as our largest fund for job training. That’s a tectonic shift.”
According to the Inside Higher Ed article, McCarthy said that opening Pell Grant eligibility to short-term programs could encourage colleges to offer more short-term programs with little connection to real college degree pathways: “This could really have the potential to exacerbate some of our equity problems,” she said.
The National Skills Coalition estimates that nearly half of all job openings between now and 2022 will be “middle-skill” jobs that require education beyond high school but not a four-year degree. While the number of students pursuing postsecondary certifications is increasing, the supply of skilled workers still falls short of industry demand. The JOBS Act encourages employers to work with institutions of higher education to identify in-demand career fields.
The JOBS Act is endorsed by the National Skills Coalition (NSC), the Association of Community Colleges and Trustees (ACCT), the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP), IBM, Opportunity America, Jobs for the Future, Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS), the Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE), Advance CTE, and Young Invincibles.
Cracking Down on Security with the SAT and ACT
Recent college admissions scandals that have revealed cheating on college entrance exams such as the SAT and ACT have put standardized testing under scrutiny. The College Board, which administers the SAT, and ACT will expand security through photo ID checks, seating charts, and scripts for the test proctors. One of the major holes that remains, according to Politico in a July 7 article, is the systems’ dependence on outside people, such as school employees, to act as proctors and supervisors.
“Everything in this process is based on belief, acceptance that the people in the process will be honest,” said test prep coach, Akil Bello, as reported by Politico.
The small amount of oversight with choosing proctors means that almost any-one can be brought in; the College Board does not check up on who is chosen.
ACT and the College Board defend the integrity of their systems. According to Politico, Ed Colby, ACT spokesman said, “Our ACT test manual instructs coordinators that test center staff must be people of integrity.” Zachary Goldberg, the College Board spokesman, continued, “We have bolstered our security efforts by adding to our test security team, and their expertise has led to innovations in preventing cheating.” These innovations include collecting cellphones, making more test content, and enhancing general security at the test centers. These changes though do not affect the method for choosing proctors.
Despite these organizations’ assurances of the integrity of their systems, many test site supervisors find that it is an honor system that can be exploited. After the admissions scandal was uncovered, the College Board and ACT tried to emphasize the rarity of these occurrences. Despite being uncommon, the scandal still shows loop holes that these testing companies have yet to solve.
Test sites, under both companies, can apply to be chosen based on the number of students the site can accommodate and demand for sites in the area, among other requirements. One way the College Board has heightened security is by limiting the test sites that students have the option to go to.
Some, like test prep coach David Benjamin Gruenbaum, think that these testing companies should hire their own proctors for the test instead of doing it indirectly through schools. “There’s just been a litany of problems with security,” Gruenbaum said, as reported by Politico. “So, why wouldn’t you want to hire professionals to administer the tests properly?”
Senators Pushing Alternatives to Student Loans
In July, Senators announced a bill– the ISA Student Protection Act of 2019– that would encourage the growth of income-share agreements (ISAs), an alter-native to student loans that is privately run where students will pay back a portion of their future income.
Two Republican senators, Marco Rubio and Todd Young, and two Democratic senators, Mark Warner and Chris Coons, introduced the bill. “I have introduced a bill to offer students from all backgrounds with a private—or philanthropically—funded, debt-free financing option catered to their own income needs through the use of income share agreements,” Senator Young said, as reported by Inside Higher Ed. “If we strengthen the framework of ISAs, we can help colleges and career and technical schools prepare Americans for rewarding careers, all without any additional cost to taxpayers.”
For most ISA agreements students would not have to start paying companies until they reach a certain income. This legislation would ensure that students below a certain income level would be exempt from having to pay ISAs, that payments are capped at 20 percent of the students’ incomes, and give more government oversight of the ISAs.
Some experts are wary of this student loan alternative. Staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center, Joanna Darcus, explained to Inside Higher Ed that, “ISAs cannot be properly described as anything other than debt. Legislation like this would actually roll back the existing protections that we have for students when they incur debt. We need to be very careful to ensure that we’re not adding to the confusion in the higher ed financing market.”
The Trump administration has taken an interest in ISAs and wants to experiment with them through pilot programs by using the Education Department’s experimental sites authority. Other politicians, such as Senator Elizabeth Warren and Congress-women Ayanna Pressley and Katie Porter, wrote a statement to Secretary Betsy DeVos expressing their view that the Education Department should be focusing on alleviating the effects of the student debt crisis instead of exerting resources to these experiments with ISAs.
Budget Cuts Threaten Alaska’s State University System
In July, Alaska’s university system lost 41 percent of their state funding, resulting in the need for the University of Alaska’s Board of Regents to decide how best to cut $135 million from their budget.
According to Inside Higher Ed, some of the budget cutting options proposed by the president of Alaska system, Jim Johnsen, included: allowing each of the three universities in the system to reduce their own budgets how they like, closing regional campuses, cut-ting down the range of offered programs at the universities, and consolidating the three institutions into one. While these specifics have not been decided, the board voted (on July 22, 2019) 10 to 1 to declare a financial emergency, allowing the state to lay off faculty and get rid of programs at a quicker rate. This vote does not mean that faculty and programs will be cut but it makes it easier to do so if that becomes necessary.
The reason for these drastic budget cuts, as reported by the Chronicle of Higher Education, was Governor Michael J. Dunleavy’s assertion that the state was spending too much money per a student. His veto of a proposed state budget led to these looming budget cuts when the veto failed to be over-ridden. This cut will reduce the number from $16,300 to $11,00 per a student, still more than the national aver-age. Alaska’s immense land area means that this cost per a student should be more than the national average in order to balance out the costs of having less students and more area.
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